


A Certain Ring of Truth

by SylvanWitch



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M, Slow Build, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 03:24:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15787950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: An ancient temple, a fistful of bells, a kiss and six years:  This is what it takes to bring Brad and Nate together.





	A Certain Ring of Truth

**Author's Note:**

> The characters in this story are fictional, based on the characters in the HBO series _Generation Kill_ as portrayed by actors. No resemblance to actual, living persons is intended or implied.

There’s an old Iraqi saying:  _Life is like a cucumber: You get one in your hand and ten in your ass._

 

Brad is pondering rectal capacity and the lubricating qualities of warm yogurt when he’s interrupted by a shower of dirt and pebbles into his meticulously dug grave.

 

Without lifting his Kevlar from his eyes, Brad says, “Ray, this better be fucking good, or I’m going to shove a cucumber so far up your whiskey tango ass you’ll be spitting pickles for a week.”

 

The infinitesimal pause that follows telegraphs Brad’s mistake.

 

“As interesting as a cucumber colonic might be, Sergeant Colbert, right now I need your expertise for something else.”

 

Brad rises languidly from his grave, securing his Kevlar, sans chin-strap—the fucker itches—and drops in beside the LT, who’s giving him a sidelong look.  He doesn’t blush—the Iceman’s blood isn’t warm enough for that—but there’s a rueful undertone when he says, “Sorry, sir.”

 

Fick’s impassive expression is matched only by his deadpan delivery: “I think you’d have to add vinegar with the cucumber to achieve the desired effect.  And that would sting.”

 

Suddenly it dawns on Brad that this is to date the longest conversation they’ve had using actual words, as opposed to speaking looks, and most of those words have revolved around putting a hard, phallic object up someone’s ass.  Even given the higher-than-average incidence of homoeroticism in their unit, this is notable:  the LT typically keeps himself—and his ass—to himself.

 

Of course, technically they’re talking about Ray’s ass, but still, it raises questions.

  
“Sir—,” Brad starts.

 

“Later, Sergeant,” Fick answers, indicating Poke and Pappy with a tilt of his chin.  They’re standing around a map open over the hood of Pappy’s Humvee.

 

Brad is distracted enough by the possibilities in the word “later,” particularly given the way the LT’s tongue had ghosted over his bottom lip as he’d said it, that he misses Pappy’s opening salvo.

 

“You busy daydreaming about shaggy-haired surfers and their long, wet dicks again?” Poke asks, apparently unabashed by the lieutenant’s presence.

 

“Actually, I was considering which of you I’d make my bitch if we survived an apocalypse and needed to repopulate the world with ass-babies.”

 

Espera’s mouth opens to retort and Fick slides an easy, “So here’s the situation,” in before he can.

 

On the map is a wadi, some black squares indicating buildings, and a ragged line of dashes leading from the village to an elevation to the east.

 

“Eyes in the sky say this is a ratline, but they can’t figure out where it’s going to or coming from.  They want us to check it out.”

 

Brad puts a hand to his chest and opens his mouth in mock-astonishment. “Sir, you can’t be suggesting that we’ve actually been ordered to do what we’re specifically trained for at a great deal of taxpayers’ expense?”

 

Before the lieutenant can answer, Espera says, “Fuck no.  Probably throwing us a bone so they can tell the Pentagon we’re being utilized to our fullest potential.”  He says the last few words with a horrible clenched-teeth, New England accent.

 

“Leaving government oversight out of it,” Fick redirects smoothly, “It’s what we’re going to do.  Full dark is at 16:30 Zulu. We go ten mikes after that.”

 

Blood zipping at the potential for some actual fucking action, Brad abandons any thought of sleep, briefs his team on the op, and then spends the next few hours lovingly prepping his weapons.  The moondust of the Iraqi desert gets everywhere, and while Brad is religious about keeping his M4 clean, no amount of devotion can prevent penetration.  It’s almost enough to drive the faith out of a guy who custom-designed his own turret.

 

The sky is a murderous red, sunset turning the uneven ground into a wastescape of shadow craters and phantom tripwires, when he leads his team to Pappy’s truck, where Fick gives them a second briefing and reminds them of the ROE: “Return fire only, gentlemen.”

 

Someone in the grey air behind the LT sucks teeth.

  
Brad says, “Swift, _silent_ , and deadly, sir.”

 

Fick holds his look for a moment and then nods, turns on his heel, and says, “Move out.”

 

Brad takes up his position in the lead, Ray behind him, Trombley the third, practically vibrating with the need to fire at something.  Walt’s behind him, steady as always.

 

“Trombley, you frag me and I’m gonna come back and fill your wife with my icy ghost jizz,” Ray says, reading Brad’s mind, at least on that first part.

 

“She’s already pregnant,” Trombley answers, as if they need him to remind them again, and Ray opens his mouth to retort—Brad doesn’t have to be looking at him to know that.

 

“Quiet,” Brad says, low, and then there are no sounds except for their breathing and the occasional skitter of a night creature scrambling out of their moving shadows.

 

Through his NVGs, the world has a manic glow, everything swimming in nuclear green, but that green glances off nothing more interesting than a rock outcropping a few hundred feet up the rise.  He watches it keenly for movement or the prism of starlight on a scope or barrel.

 

Nothing.

 

When he comes upon a clear track, the marks of sandaled and bare feet clear in the silty dust, he signals a halt and indicates that he’s moving ahead alone.

 

Ray nods, and the rest of the unit falls into watchful crouches, guns alternating like the narrow petals of a deadly daisy chain.

 

Brad scouts every step, pausing to remove his NVGs and let his eyes adjust so that he can make out the finer details like tripwires, pressure plates, or suspiciously mounded earth.

 

But the footprints are random and ubiquitous, and it would be a foolish haji who mined his own trail so indiscriminately.

 

Straightening up, Brad signals the all-clear and pulls his NVGs back down over his eyes.

 

His stalking has taken him closer to an opening between two rockfaces, each of which tower over Brad.  The narrow path leads between them and around to the right, a blind curve perfect for an ambush.  He waits for the rest of the teams to catch up with him and then moves ahead alone, treating the rock wall to his right like it’s the corner of a building in some trash-clogged urban megapolis. 

 

Shoulder as pivot point, Brad takes a steadying breath, uses his barrel to lead any fire, and when nothing happens, he slides around the corner, sinks into a crouch, and sweeps the area in front of him with his M-4.  He’s not thinking about his actions, muscle memory and adrenaline making his movements fluid and graceful. 

 

He’s aware of the others fanning out around him, that they’re training their sights on every point from which an enemy might fire upon them.

 

That leaves him the luxury of examining the courtyard-like space before him and, beyond that, the incongruous sight of a door set square in the rockface that makes up western wall.  The door is bedazzled to within an inch of functionality, covered in mirrors and bits of broken glass, only the ordinary brass handle free of ornament except for a string of silver bells on a red and orange braided cord.

 

Carved into the rock above the door are a series of symbols.  Brad’s no expert, but it doesn’t look like Arabic to him.

 

 _Huh_ , Brad thinks, not sure what to make of it, only aware that there may be a dozen or a hundred bad guys behind the door just waiting for them to open it up.

 

He turns to find the LT, who catches the look and signals for Brad to retreat, leaving the rest of the teams, sans Pappy and Poke, to guard the door.

 

Once they’ve moved back down the trail and out of earshot, Fick says, “Assessment?”

 

“No bootprints,” Brad says at once.  While not all the hajis are appropriately shod for combat, most of them have boots or sandals.  There are a whole lot of bare footprints in the clinging dust of the trail.

 

“The sparkly shit is definitely the hajis’ thing,” Poke adds, “but it seems weird for a hideout, way out here in the middle of no-fuckin-where.”

 

“Could be a weapons cache,” Pappy says slowly, already shaking his head, though, when Brad says, “No, too much traffic and no booby-traps.”

 

“Only one way to find out,” Fick says then, and though his voice is as even as always, Brad catches a gleam way back in his eyes that says he’s amped up.

 

 _Get some_.

 

“SOP,” the LT reminds them, and they hustle back to find the teams in the same place where they left them. 

 

Gunny indicates that the situation is unchanged, and Fick gives Brad the nod to take point at the door.

 

Ray drops to a crouch to the left of the door, ready with the door as cover to fire into the room if Brad needs support or to drag Brad out of the doorway if he’s hit.  Walt puts his back to the rock to Brad’s right, and Trombley flattens himself to Walt’s left, ready to go in behind Walt on Brad’s signal or if things get hot in a hurry.

 

It’s when he’s reaching for the doorknob that Brad remembers the goddamned bells. 

 

Cupping the bottom of the three, he slowly— _slowly_ —gathers them into his hand to muffle their ringing, and then it’s quick work with his K-Bar to cut the cord on which they hang.  Without looking, he reaches out the hand toward Walt, who takes them.

 

With a deep, centering breath, Brad turns the handle, and in a single, smooth motion he pulls the door open, drops into a low crouch, and scans the darkness for threats.

 

Nothing happens.

 

A visual sweep with his NVGs reveals hot white points of candlelight.  His eyes snag on a niche in the back wall, deeply shadowed, where a figure lurks.  Aiming his M-4, Brad flips up his goggles, sighting down the night vision scope, which can distinguish minute details at hundreds of yards.

 

 _Huh_.

 

He calls, “Clear,” and rises from his crouch, moving into the space.  It’s a room hewn out of rock, oblong in shape, maybe fifteen feet long by eleven feet wide.  The back wall is broken by a roughly carved niche about four feet taller than Brad.

 

“Jesus,” Ray breathes, taking in the statue standing on the plinth in the niche.  “Will you look at the tits on her.”

 

Walt, typically, says nothing, while Trombley roots around in the mess of food, flowers, and trinkets that litter the ground at the base of the plinth.  He knocks over a candle, extinguishing it.

 

Brad barks, “Knock it off,” which seems to startle all of them.  Something about the place makes him deeply uneasy; the skin at the base of his skull crawls.

 

“It’s Inanna, Sumerian fertility goddess,” the LT says quietly, having entered while Brad was…distracted…by the statue.  She’s curved lushly, wide-hipped and big-breasted, with a thatch of springy hair at her crotch and a direct gaze that Brad can’t seem to look away from. 

 

“This is a temple.”  There’s wonder in Fick’s voice, and that finally draws Brad’s eyes away from the goddess.   “Probably first century.  I wondered when I saw the writing on the lintel.”  His academic assessment trails off as Fick takes a hesitant step further into the room, the light mounted on his Kevlar bringing details into stark relief as he assesses it.

 

Fick is clearly observing _and_ admiring, and Brad’s scalp starts to tingle.  The others file out of the cave.

 

“We shouldn’t be here,” Brad says, surprised to hear his voice come out rough and thready, like he’s been running in a gas mask for miles.  His heart kicks against his ribs painfully, and he realizes his hands are clenching his M-4 hard enough to hurt, but he can’t seem to ease his grip, suddenly sure that if he lets go of his gun, he’ll reach for the lieutenant, and that’s…not right.

 

But Brad can’t, for the life of him, remember why it would be a bad idea to wrap his hand around Nate’s nape and draw him in for a long, wet kiss.

 

The thought makes him hard in an instant, and he sucks in a startled breath that sounds like a gunshot in the unnatural quiet of the room, suddenly desperate to find a focal point that isn’t the goddess’ body or, worse, Lieutenant Fick’s.

 

It’s just the two of them now sharing the waiting stillness.  When he focuses, Brad can hear Ray outside regaling the teams with pornographic descriptions of the statue.  He can’t hear the others’ words in reply, but their collective tone is utterly familiar.

 

“Sir, we can’t let them in here,” but he doesn’t know why he says it, only that it’s true.

 

“I know, Brad,” the LT answers, and Brad’s eyes catch on him, terrified to see on his face the same helpless expression he’s sure he’s wearing on his own.  _Jesus, we have to get out of this fucking cave_.

 

Nate—because he’s just Nate now, not Fick, not the LT, not a Recon Marine or brother-in-arms—licks his lower lip nervously, and Brad’s sniper’s focus hones in on the wet pink tip of it.  Christ, he can feel the slide of that tongue against his own, can practically taste Nate’s mouth, foul with dust and spent adrenaline and shitty MREs and all.

 

“We have to—” Nate says at the same time Brad tries, “We should—” and makes a break for the door.

 

It’s a strategic miscalculation on Brad’s part.  He can’t just slip by Nate—the door is half-closed, the frame only wide enough for one, and they’re both wearing a mountain of gear, and before he can rethink his move, Brad’s right on top of Nate, whose eyes are wide, pupils dark, lips pink and wet and open on his own desperate gasp.

 

The kiss is inevitable and cataclysmic, what blood that’s left in Brad’s brain flooding into his dick at the sound Nate makes back in his throat, an atavistic noise of hunger and surrender and fear at the loss of control.  Brad is horrified to hear himself making his own noises, and Jesus fuck their brother Marines are just beyond the half-open door and here are the Iceman and his lieutenant moaning like horny teenagers. Kevlars banging together, their M-4s a terminal barrier keeping them from any kind of real contact, Brad wants nothing more than to drive a leg between Nate’s thighs so they can rub themselves off and—

 

“You better not leave any of your jizz on her titties, Brad, ‘cause the rest of us don’t want to see that shit when it’s our turn to jerk one out.”

 

Ray’s voice cuts through the haze of need like a laser sight, bringing piercing clarity to the moment.

 

The zipper of Brad’s pants is digging into his cock.  He breath is gusting out of him like he’s just surfaced after drown-proofing, and he’s having trouble remembering where he is.  His knees are humiliatingly weak, and he sways towards Nate, who uses his own weapon to prop Brad up, as if he’s afraid to touch him even through their layers of body armor and DCUs.

 

“Go,” the LT says—and it’s unmistakably Lieutenant Fick giving the order, even if his voice sounds like his throat’s just been fucked, and isn’t that just the worst observation Brad’s brain could come up with at this particular juncture, Jesus fucking Christ.

 

Brad swallows an embarrassing sound, chokes on air, and coughs his way through the door and into the loudness beyond, where Ray makes a crack about Brad’s jack-off technique and Poke says something about objectifying the brown people for the white man’s pleasure.

 

Brad’s still breathless, struggling to regain a sense of himself, so he’s grateful for the silence that falls when the LT emerges from the temple, as if the guys had forgotten Fick was there at all.

 

“The temple is off-limits as a cultural and religious artifact.  Close the door, Sergeant Patrick, we’re Oscar Mike.”

 

Brad’s grateful for the normalcy of the lieutenant’s voice and for the excuse to move out ahead of the rest, taking point.  The air is cool against his over-heated face, and the familiar scuff of boots on the dirt grounds him as he tries to bring his heartrate back in line, wrenching his head away again and again from the images it’s trying to replay.

 

He tries to focus on his job, on surveilling the area and making sure they don’t walk into a trap, but trap reminds him of the way it felt to be held in the goddess’ regard, to sense a huge and looming presence filling him, tearing his will away, leaving him naked to the need that he ignored most of the time but that was always, always fucking there.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

Back at camp, Fick’s words of praise are terse and ring hollow to Brad, but none of the others seem to notice any difference in their LT, and they peel off to catch some shut-eye or take a dump or whack one out under a Humvee, images springing to life from Ray’s vivid descriptions of the statue.

 

He realizes he’s standing, still in all his gear, staring sightlessly into his grave, and as he tells himself to get it the fuck together, he hears Nate approaching, and he knows it’s Nate now, not the LT, on some primitive level he can’t explain or ignore.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

With a superhuman effort, Brad smooths his features to careful impassivity as he turns to face Nate.  He waits for him to speak, not trusting his voice to maintain the disguise.

 

He sees Nate’s eyes flick past him, assessing their privacy, and then he licks his lips, goddamn him, and says, “I’m sorry.  That was conduct unbecoming.  I’ll report myself in the morning to—”

 

 _Of course_ , Brad thinks, Nate’s going to do the “right” thing, which will fuck them all up beyond goddamned recognition.

 

It takes less effort this time, and Brad’s proud of the balance of disingenuousness and respect in his voice when he says, “I’m sorry, sir, but you seem to be laboring under the assumption that I know what you’re talking about.”

 

He watches as his meaning lands, as Nate puts _them_ away and becomes, in a minute change of expression and tension, Lieutenant Fick again except for the suggestion of warm gratitude that lurks in the depths of those green, speaking eyes.

 

Brad swallows the painful ball of regret that’s trying to choke him and says, “That all, sir?”

 

“Carry on, Sergeant,” Fick acknowledges, turning and walking away.

 

Brad’s stowing his gear when Walt approaches, something balled in his hand, and Brad realizes what Walt’s going to give him, almost recoils from the movement as Walt reaches out his hand, revealing the temple bells, shining dully in a coil of crumpled cord.

 

“Figured you’d want a souvenir,” says Walt, handing them over.

 

Brad would rather handle a scorpion, but he takes them with a nod and a curt, “Thanks,” and shoves them into the bottom of his pack, planning to ditch them somewhere later, when his head is less fucked and he doesn’t feel like he’s trying to swallow around a grenade.

 

*****

 

Later turns out to be stateside at Camp Pendleton a few days after they’d returned.  He’s sitting on a concrete parking stop emptying his pack.  They’d had the usual decon before they’d shipped out from Iraq, but in his experience, moondust is impossible to get rid of.  He’ll be breathing it for the rest of his life.

 

Still, he’s doing his best to clear his shit of it.

 

Rooting around in the bottom, his fingers brush something cool and smooth, and he jerks first at the unfamiliar sensation—like finding a viper in your boot—and then a cold wave of goosebumps washes up his back as he realizes what they are.

 

The California breeze strokes a tinny jingle out of them, and Brad’s back in a candlelit cave, air redolent of wax and rotting offerings and sweat and need, and Nate’s making noises into his mouth.

 

The bells jangle discordantly when they hit the ground, and Brad kicks them away like they’ll bite.  His heart’s kicking in his ribcage and his blood thunders in his head like he’s back in a tin can watching RPGs turn the ground to geysers all around him.

 

Wiping a hand over his face, he forces his mind back to the here and now, to the mundane task of checking gear.  Are these batteries used or new?  He’ll have to check them with a meter.  Are his NVGs fucked enough that he can finagle a replacement from the Corps, or does he need to take a page from Rolling Stone and order his own on eBay? 

 

Eventually, gear piled into “keep,” “repair,” “trash”—that last being by far the largest pile—Brad searches out the bells out of some perverse desire to test his will against them.

 

This time, they’re just metal, pocked with age and abuse, and dirty cord, gold faded to brown, red to the color of dried blood on desert khaki.  No threat.

 

Without thinking about it, he puts them in his pocket, promising himself to get rid of them in some inventive and absolutely final way.

 

They’re still there a couple of hours later, when Brad runs into Lieutenant Fick, who looks tired and somehow older, face thinned with worry and lined with squinting against sun and shamal winds. 

 

“Sir,” Brad says, nodding.  Fick pauses when they draw closer, eyes searching Brad’s face, though for what, he doesn’t know.  Once again, Brad feels the real world receding, but this time he’s ready, clamping down ruthlessly on the memories.

 

A closer look at the LT brings him fully back to the here and now.  There’s something hesitant in his posture, and it feels wrong.  The man who had iron nerves while directing traffic in a firefight shouldn’t look like he’s uncertain about his right of way on a Marine base on home turf.

 

“I’m glad I ran into you, Brad,” his use of Brad’s name a familiarity that seems at odds with his expression.  He looks like he’d rather eat a shit sandwich in a sandstorm than talk to Brad.

 

Brad assumes parade rest just to see what’ll happen and gloats a little at the irritation that fans across Fick’s face before he says, “At ease,” in the same tone he’d used when trying to finesse meaningful orders from Schwetje.

 

“I wanted to tell you myself, before the scuttlebutt got to you.  I’ve put in my papers. I’m leaving the Corps.” 

 

He delivers this in a careful monotone, eyes somewhere over Brad’s left shoulder.

 

“It’s a damned shame to lose you,” Brad responds in a tone identical to the lieutenant’s.

 

“You don’t sound surprised.”  There’s a question lurking in his expression, the officer being displaced by the man.

 

Brad shrugs, makes a point of looking the LT right in the eyes when he says, “You lost faith, sir.”

 

He shakes his head: “No.  No, I did not.  Not in my men.  Not in _you_.” 

 

“Is that the LT talking?” Brad asks, but they both already know the answer.

 

Nate huffs out a laugh, humorless.  “Captain, actually.  When the papers go through.”

 

“Congrats, sir,” Brad drawls. 

 

“Don’t do that,” Nate says, all at once serious, his eyes asking for something from Brad that Brad’s not sure he’ll ever be prepared to give and that he knows with a startling clarity that he absolutely wants to offer anyway.

 

The air around them has gone strangely still, though that’s probably just Brad’s perception.  The hyper-vigilance he typically experiences post-combat is screaming _Get down_! _Take cover_!  Sweat breaks out along the back of his neck, and his scalp prickles.  He clenches his hands and clears his throat, mouth dry as the desert.

 

Brad has survived firefights and incompetent leadership and diarrhea bad enough to make him cry, and he’s cotton-mouthed and sweaty-palmed on a sidewalk in California, halfway between the family haircutting place and the base Wendy’s.

 

Desperate to recover what’s left of his tattered cool, Brad says, “Do what, sir?” like butter wouldn’t melt in his lying mouth.

 

The look of disappointment—in _Brad_ —on Nate’s face then makes Brad want to beg for forgiveness, and that, in turn, pisses him off.  He’s Brad the fucking Iceman Colbert.  He doesn’t beg.  And who’s this Ivy League dick-suck quitter to make him feel this way?

 

Brad shifts his weight, aggression leaking into his stance, and something jingles in his pocket, puncturing his righteous indignation and leaving him suddenly breathless, deflated, empty but not alone.

 

Nate looks stricken, too, paler than when this train wreck of a conversation had started and even older, dark circles under his eyes and a haunted look in them, like an age has passed while they’d stood there trying to square each other away.

 

“I’m sorry,” they say at the same time, Nate shaking his head and smiling grimly at the echo.

 

Brad says it again, quietly, steadily, holding Nate’s gaze with his own.

 

Nate shrugs, looks away first, eyes on the fast food places and chain businesses but seeing somewhere else, maybe the future when this won’t be so hard.  Maybe the past when it was somehow easier for all that they were at war.

 

At least then, they knew who the enemy was, most of the time.

 

Now, it feels to Brad like he might betray himself or Nate or both.

 

Fuck it, he’s too tired for this shit.

 

“We’ll make sure to put up the good stuff for your paddle party,” he promises, struggling for casual and managing, maybe, a strangled sort of denial.

 

“I am assured of this,” Nate answers, mocking himself, a younger self, and inviting Brad into that shared memory.

 

Brad returns the wry smile, sketches a completely non-regulation salute, and breaks contact.  Whatever is in the lieutenant’s face then, Brad resolutely refuses to see it.  He moves on purposefully, striding like he knows where he’s going, like the future is clear to him.  A faint jingling in his pocket mocks him every step of the way, and he vows to stop at the motor pool to borrow a soldering gun and melt these fuckers down.

 

Before he gets there, though, he’s waylaid by Ray and Walt, both of them with dripping ice cream cones in their hands and shit-eating grins on their faces, full of the news of the LT’s leaving and already planning the blowout of the century.

 

While Ray’s weighing Real Doll versus Porn-of-the-Month Club for the LT’s going away gift, Brad’s accommodating the cold and bitter lump in his chest, pushing it into a dark pit where it won’t do him much harm.

 

Eventually, Brad’s called upon to offer his own opinion, which leads to a debate about Fleshlights versus Australian strange, safety versus verisimilitude, cost versus quality.  If he’s less than invested in the outcome of the conversation, they don’t seem to notice.

 

Façade firmly in place, he walks on with them, ignoring the weight of the bells in his pocket and the heavier, colder weight in his chest, costing him breath. 

 

*****

 

Brad can see his breath in the chill March air.  He ghosts like a smoker as he waits on the sidewalk in front of the place where he’s supposed to be meeting a couple of the guys for a few beers.  He’s only in town for a week of training before he heads back to Pendleton.  That some of the team happen to be here also is an unexpected pleasure.

 

Brad hears Ray long before he sees him, voice no less loud, words no less lewd for the six years growing up he’s supposed to have done.  Someone answers him, but Brad’s not sure who it is, his tone modulated for the mixed crowd of exurban theater-goers, Beltway functionaries, and gentrified locals that make up the neighborhood around the “gastropub” and “microbrewery” Ray has suckered him into patronizing.

 

The only thing keeping Brad there is imagining the looks on the other patrons’ faces when Ray opens up with one of his monologues.  That alone might be worth having to suffer through flax-infused asiago biscuits and grass-fed, free-range Buffalo steak in an edamame-garlic chutney, chased down with a “full-headed pugnacious pale ale slow-brewed in oak soaked in real Kentucky branchwater” or some bullshit.

 

Ray rounds the corner already calling out something to Brad, which the latter doesn’t hear because he can only focus on the man walking next to Ray, Captain Nate Fick (ret.), whose long-suffering but fond expression shifts to wariness and then shutters into neutrality when he realizes who’s waiting for them in front of the bar.

 

“I didn’t pick the place,” are Nate’s first words to Brad, who for his part hasn’t quite regained the faculty of speech.

 

Ray is crowing about having finally gotten one over on the Iceman, who had no idea Ray was inviting Nate.

 

“You look like someone just found your prostate,” Ray is saying as he pulls Brad into the one-armed, back-slapping American guy hug acceptable for a busy city street in the U.S.

 

“For all its pretentious hipster bullshit, this place is supposed to have the best beer in D.C.,” Ray says, “And what do you want to bet it has more bush per square foot than a Turkish whorehouse?”

 

Brad’s not sure what Ray is talking about, but then, that’s nothing new.  New is the solid bulk of Nate’s shoulders filling out his leather jacket and the way he wears his age and obvious success with a mindful ease and sense of cool competence that make something hot slither in Brad’s gut.

  
He has to swallow twice before saying, “Hello, sir,” and offering his hand.

 

Nate uses the hand to pull Brad into his second hug of the night, saying “It’s Nate, Brad, please,” before squeezing his shoulders and stepping back to look him in the eyes.  “You look good.”

 

“So do you, s—, Nate,” he manages, shoring up his crumbling equanimity.  He can still feel the weight of Nate’s arm across his back and the heat of Nate’s hand in his own. 

 

“Shall we?” Nate asks, gesturing to the door.  Ray opens it and motions them in with a ridiculous flourish, and they both laugh at him, and like that the tension eases and Brad can fall back on the remembered patterns, razzing Ray about his poor taste in clothes, music, and beer and watching Nate watch them back, expression better guarded than in the bad old days but still easy enough to read for Brad, who’s feeling a little more settled in a corner booth with sightlines on the exits and Nate a steady, watchful presence near him, covering Brad’s six.

 

They share a look over Ray’s continuous, unfettered offensiveness, even surrounded by men and women in tastefully appointed outfits the cost of which alone could go a long way toward buying Ray’s entire hometown, razing it, and building another Mall of America in the dusty ruins.

 

When Brad points this out, predictably, Ray says, “Fuck them.  We pay taxes, don’t we?  So technically, we’re their bosses.  Add to that the blood, sweat, and tears we shed so they could sit their Ralph Lauren asses in their ergonomically designed chairs at their fag-designed desks and criticize us over low-fat, goat milk, half-caff lattes, and I’d say they should at least pay for our fuckin’ dinners.  But nooooo, that’s not gonna happen.  And what do we have to show for all our suffering?  Nothing!  Not even a goddamned Republican Guard hat to sell on eBay.  Hey, you remember that temple we found?  We should totally have desecrated it for war booty.”

 

And like that the air turns dense with tension, and the skin at Brad’s nape is tightening, and he’s having trouble figuring out where to look.  When he does look at Nate, he takes some comfort in the fact that the captain is as awash in uncertainty as Brad is.

 

“I’m gonna hit the head,” Ray announces, overloud.  The few diners left at tables near theirs look conspicuously anywhere but at their table, which leaves Brad and Nate in relative privacy, a fact that only tightens Brad’s chest.

 

“Funny he brought up the temple,” Nate says at last, and Brad has to give him props for courage.  He would have sat there in awkward silence forever rather than address the ancient sex goddess in the room.

 

“Oh?” Brad says, figuring a monosyllable is the safest bet.

 

“Yeah.  Awhile back I got a package in the mail, no return address.  Imagine my surprise when I found these in it.”

 

Brad knows what he’s going to see before he hears the telltale jingle.  Cold sweat breaks out in a prickling blanket across his shoulders, and it’s a physical effort not to push himself away from the table, away from Nate and the temple bells he’s holding in one steady heady.

 

They’re the same bells—pitted silver, filthy cord, tinkling high and flat in a minor key—that Brad left with stone-faced deliberation in a burn barrel in Iraq in 2005.  He’s as sure as it’s possible to be that no one was around to fish them out when he’d dropped them into the flames, but even if someone had, it’s not like he’d engraved Nate’s name on them or some goddamned gay shit like that. 

 

“How—?”  He shakes his head, the room wobbling a little on the periphery though he’s only had three beers.

 

Nate shrugs, coaxing a tinkling out of the bells, and to his eternal shame, Brad’s breath catches, and he has to say, “Don’t.”

 

Because it’s not fear he’s feeling now but Nate’s mouth on his, the heat of his mouth and the weight of his tongue against Brad’s own.  The room has gone dark except for the indefinite light of candles, and he can smell gun oil and sweat and the sickly odor of rotting fruit from the offerings at the statue’s feet.  Want pools heavy and low in his core, and he makes his own noise trying to deny the sensation, trying to wrench himself back to the here and now.

 

A warm, steady pressure on his forearm brings him back, and he blinks at Nate’s concerned expression, at his closeness where he leans into him.

 

“Sir, we need to leave.”  His voice is alien to himself; he’s not even sure what he’s saying.

 

But Nate just says, “Okay,” sure and steady, like it’s every day that Brad freaks out on him in the middle of a restaurant.

 

Ray’s not back yet, but it doesn’t matter.  Nothing matters but getting out of there.  Brad pulls his coat on with hands that are treacherously unsteady.  He can’t look at Nate, afraid of what he’ll see in his face.  He moves toward the door, letting Nate settle the bill, knowing he should stay, should act normal, should try to brush his behavior off as a momentary lapse, combat stress, something—anything but what it is, overwhelming sense memory, heat rising up his chest and into his cheeks, his cock half-hard, all wanting.

 

The cold spring air slaps him in the face, and a couple of searing lungfuls help to center him, at least enough that he doesn’t humiliate himself further when Nate appears, pulling on his own jacket and searching Brad out, assessing the threat of an explosion.

 

“I’m sorry, s—.”

 

“It’s Nate.  And there’s nothing to be sorry for.  Let’s walk.”

 

Brad spares a glance back at the pub.  “Ray?”

 

“He’ll find his way.”

 

Brad has to concede that it’s true.  Ray might be a whiskey tango mouthbreather, but he’s also a devil dog.

 

Nate guides them away from the main thoroughfare and down a quiet city block crowded with brownstones that stand shoulder to shoulder against incursion from the boisterous world beyond their front stoops.  Cars line the street on one side, gleaming dully in the gentle light of imitation gaslamps.  Somewhere a dog barks and is quickly hushed.

 

 Brad finds himself synching his breathing with their footsteps.  It calms him, eases some of the tension coiled in his gut.

 

“Where are we going?” he thinks to ask after a quarter hour or so has passed.

 

“Just here,” Nate answers, leading Brad around a corner and three doors down, to a nondescript brownstone with a red door and shutters and black wrought iron railings.  Nate opens the door and gestures for Brad to come in.  As Brad steps into the narrow front hallway, he catches the scent of Nate—cherry wood, lemon, and freshly turned earth—and he closes his eyes against the renewed wave of desire it raises in him.

 

Nate waits for Brad to pass him so he can close the door, but Brad is caught there on the threshold, too close to Nate for comfort, the cold air at his back teasing him with the proximity of escape.

 

Nate steps into him to herd him into the hall and lets Brad feel his heat, his solidity.  Instead of moving around him once the door is closed, Nate stops to look up at Brad and let him see what he’s feeling—concern for him, yes, but also desire, plain and clear, heat in his eyes and a faint hint of color in his cheeks that could be chalked up to the walk in the cold, except for the way that Nate lets Brad see him looking at Brad’s lips and then swipes his own bottom lip with the gleaming tip of his tongue.

 

Brad isn’t sure who closes the distance, only that he’s got Nate’s mouth on his own for the second time in their storied history, and his brain refuses to process any further intel; it’s all hot wet pressure, slick tongues, and a breathy whine that he will deny to his dying day.

  
Which might be today, given the way his heart is rattling against his ribs, blood roaring in his ears.

  
Distantly, he thinks he hears chiming, and he breaks away from Nate so abruptly that he smacks the back of his head against the mirror hanging in the hall.

 

The shooting pain centers him, brings him back to himself, and he shakes his head.

 

“This isn’t right.”

 

Nate, who’d put both hands up like he’s trying to gentle a runaway horse, says, “Are you?  Alright, I mean?”

 

Brad touches the back of his head gingerly, relieved to feel no wetness.

 

“Yeah.  I’ve got a hard head.”

 

Nate snorts eloquently at the obvious understatement and then glances at Brad’s other hard head, bringing his eyes slowly back up to Brad’s and smiling wickedly.

 

“So, I know it’s not the sex that’s bothering you,” Nate begins almost conversationally.  “Want to tell me why we aren’t already naked and rubbing each other off?”

 

“This…thing.  It started in that temple.”

 

“Yes,” Nate answers, a question in his voice.

 

“And something about the temple made us…”  Brad’s out of his depth here, listening to himself say something ridiculous, something completely outside of his experience or worldview.  Fuck, he doesn’t even believe in god.  This a-goddess-made-us-do-it bullshit is bullshit.

 

But he can’t deny the desperation he felt then, nor can he explain the goddamned bells and the way they keep turning up to weaken his resolve.

 

“Are you saying we’ve been…” and it makes Brad feel a little bit better that Harvard has to think about his word choice too… “enchanted?  Bewitched?”

 

“Can you tell me you were thinking about jumping my bones before we walked into that temple, sir?”

 

Nate’s serious look dissolves into a kind of fond exasperation, and he steps again into Brad’s personal space, snugging a knee between his thighs and bracketing his head with his spread hands.

 

“Does this feel like magic to you?” Nate asks.  Brad feels the line of Nate’s hard cock through his jeans as he thrusts against Brad’s thigh.

  
“Sir, I reserve the right not to answer the question, on the grounds that it will make me sound really gay.”

 

“Gayer than this?” Nate taunts as his hand slides into Brad’s pants and cups him through his boxer briefs.

 

“Yessir,” Brad answers gamely, but he’s sounding kind of breathless, and he can’t stop the noise he makes when Nate twists the cup of his palm around the head of his cock.  The friction of the wet fabric against him shakes his knees.

 

“It wasn’t some ancient goddess who brought me here,” Nate assures him, dropping to his knees and looking up at Brad as he works open Brad’s zipper and urges Brad to spread his knees a little more to brace himself against the wall behind him.

 

At the first hint of Nate’s hot breath against the skin of his cock, Brad groans and throws his head back, forgetting in the haze of lust that he’s just clocked himself there.

 

Nate is too busy sucking the head of Brad’s dick to sympathize, and then the pain is sluiced away by a wave of knee-bending pleasure. 

 

He’s breathing so hard he feels like he’s going to choke on his heart.

 

Jesus, Nate is going to kill him, and all Brad can think is _Yes!_ _Please!_ _Harder!_

 

He must say that last part out loud because Nate pauses as he’s about to slide down Brad’s dick and flicks his eyes up at him, questioning.

 

Brad cups the back of Nate’s head as encouragement, not urging, just grounding himself by touch, wanting the connection.

 

Nate hums, eyes fluttering closed, and swallows as much of Brad as he can take in.  The rest is wrapped in the firm pressure of one hand.  The other hand is cupping Brad’s balls and rubbing his perineum and then, as Nate hums again, he circles Brad’s hole and presses in, testing.

 

Too many sensations short circuit Brad’s faculties, and before he can remember why he shouldn’t, he’s thrusting in short, aborted movements stymied by Nate’s confident grip on his dick.

 

Nate hollows his cheeks, sucking ruthlessly, and Brad bucks, tightens his fingers in Nate’s hair, and shoots down Nate’s throat, a shout searing his throat on the way out.

 

When he’s capable of words again, he murmurs a slurred, “Sorry,” but Nate is busy stripping his own cock, looking up at Brad where he slumps against the wall, eyes on Brad’s, free hand braced against Brad’s thigh, which is still trembling in the after-effects of the greatest orgasm of his life.

 

Brad knows he should do the gentlemanly thing and offer to help Nate out, but he’s transfixed by Nate’s red, wet lips open with pleasure, the sandy lashes of his eyes fluttering against his cheeks as he gives in to the sensation, hand bruising Brad’s thigh as he chokes on a shout and comes in a ropy arc, leaving pearlescent drops on the cherry parquet of his hallway.

 

Nate tips forward to rest his head against Brad’s naked thigh, and the rough softness of his hair, the heat of him and his weight, the closed circuit of Brad’s hand, still on the back of Nate’s head, and the vulnerable arch of Nate’s neck, bared for Brad, all of it too much, wrenching a tight sound out of Brad and a feeling so powerful he has to close his eyes against the heat pooling in them.

 

“Too fucking long,” he murmurs at last, trying to marshal the tattered remnants of himself.

 

He feels the drag of Nate’s hair against his leg as he nods in agreement, but Nate doesn’t look up, and suddenly Brad needs to see his face, needs to know that what he’s feeling is reflected there.

 

He squeezes Nate’s nape, and Nate does look up then, his eyes full of heat and love and purpose, a promise no less an oath for being wordless.

 

“This isn’t how I imagined our first time together,” Nate confesses, and Brad almost misses the content of the words for the thrill Nate’s throatiness gives him, remembering how his voice got wrecked and wanting to see what other ways he can leave an impression.

 

“Spent a lot of time fantasizing about me, did you, sir?” Brad teases, stroking the soft hair at the base of Nate’s skull and trying not to feel unmanned by the trust Nate has in him to put his neck in Brad’s hands like that, to kneel at his feet.  He’s so much braver than Brad, and that shit’s got to be rectified right fucking now.

 

Brad pushes off from the wall, which puts Nate back on his heels and lets Brad more easily undo his boots and kick out of his pants and briefs.  He drops the jacket he’s still wearing and then undoes his buttons and shrugs out of his shirt, too, until he’s naked except for his socks and his watch.

 

His swift decisiveness seems to have taken Nate by surprise, because he’s still kneeling in his own front hall with his dick hanging out of his pants.

 

Brad offers him a hand, and when Nate rises, pulls him in for a long, slow, deep kiss that matches Nate’s promises right back.

 

Nate’s still wearing his jacket, his shirt is still buttoned up, he’s still in his shoes.  Only the fact that his khakis are undone, the hectic flush high on his cheeks, and the bruised red of his well-fucked mouth indicate that he’s been thoroughly debauched.

 

It makes Brad want to get him naked and bite him everywhere to make sure he’s left ample evidence of their mutual undoing.

 

“Take me to your bed and fuck me proper,” Brad says, neither a question nor a command.

  
With deliberate slowness, Nate first tucks himself away and then shrugs out of his jacket, stepping up close to Brad, chests almost touching, to hang it on the hook fastened to the wall to the left of the mirror behind Brad.

 

As Nate does so, there’s a muffled jingling from one pocket.  It feels like the sun has exploded in Brad’s chest when Nate smiles at him, a wicked, warm, loving look.

 

Then he laces his fingers through Brad’s and leads him toward the stairs and the future, any doubts Brad might have had obliterated in the heavy weight of love replacing the coldness he’s carried in his chest for years.


End file.
